The community’s beginnings are based on the philosophical ideals of John (July 31, 1932 – March 24, 2013)[2] and Barbara Williamson.

[3] In the early 1960s, he opened his own electronics company, but later sold it to purchase the property at 21400 Saddle Peak Road, a cluster of well-maintained buildings on a 15-acre hilltop site in Topanga Canyon in 1968,[4] and founded the Sandstone Foundation for Community Systems Research, Inc. in 1969.

[3] Barbara Williamson, née Cramer, was a former insurance sales representative[5] who had met and married her husband in 1966.

[3] The Williamsons believed their venture was about exchanging partners for sex and setting society free,[2] and that monogamy was sexually unsatisfactory and preventing people from having full lives.

It is mentioned in the 1973 edition of More Joy of Sex, by Dr. Alex Comfort (it was omitted from later editions),[9] and treated in the book Thy Neighbor's Wife (1980) by American author Gay Talese, who first set foot in Sandstone in 1971[2] as part of his preparations for writing, and lived at the retreat for several months.